1. Technical Field
The present application relates to surgical instruments and their methods of assembly, and more particularly, to surgical clip appliers having a plurality of clips for applying the clips to body tissues and vessels during surgical procedures and their methods of assembly.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Surgical clip appliers are known in the art and have increased in popularity among surgeons by offering an alternative to conventional suturing of body tissues and vessels. Typical instruments are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,030,226 to Green et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,431,668 to Burbank III et al. These instruments generally provide a plurality of clips which are stored in the instrument and which are fed sequentially to the jaw mechanism at the distal end of the instrument upon opening and closing of the handles at the proximal end of the instrument. As the handles are closed, the jaws close to deform a clip positioned between the jaw members, and as the jaws are opened to release the deformed clip, a new clip is fed from the series to a position between the jaws. This process is repeated until all the clips in the series of clips have been used.
Surgical clip appliers are typically available in a variety of sizes and/or scales ranging from relatively small, relatively medium to relatively large. Generally, each particular size of surgical clip appliers includes different components. As such, the method of assembling the various sized surgical clip appliers differs from one size to another.
As a consequence, the technicians must be taught different routines and procedures for assembling the various sized surgical clip appliers. As a result, errors in the assembling of the various sized surgical clip appliers may occur on an elevated level as the technicians' mistake the assembly procedure of one sized surgical clip applier for the assembly procedure of another sized surgical clip applier.
The need therefore exists for a family of different sized instruments for applying surgical clips which may be assembled in the same manner from one size to another size.
Also, a need exists for a uniform method of assembling each of the different sized instruments in order to improve the efficiency of production.